Sociology of race, racism and ethnicity: Trends, debates and research agendas

Abstract

In 1969 the British Sociological Association (BSA) organised its Annual Conference on the theme of race relations. In choosing this topic the BSA was both recognising the emergence of what then a relatively new area of research and providing a space for academic debate on what had by then become a controversial issue in both civil society and politics. The edited volume produced after the conference contained influential contributions from key scholars in the field, including Michael Banton, John Rex and Sheila Allen, among others. As Tom Bottomore noted in his foreword to this volume, the various contributions to the conference had sought to ‘connect the understanding of race and racialism with broader sociological theories’ (Zubaida, 1970, p. xiii). The conference came at a time when the issue of race and immigration was becoming an important facet of policy debates. Within the wider political culture the interventions of Enoch Powell through his various speeches had helped to create an atmosphere in which debates about race and immigration had become increasingly politicised and polarised (Foot, 1969; Schoen, 1977). Within the academy there had been a shift from relative silence on questions about race and immigration to an engagement with at least some aspects of the politics of immigration and the changing position of the migrant communities that were emerging as a feature of urban life and culture in British society. It is interesting to note in this regard that in a review of the conference proceedings A.H. Halsey argued: It is not too far-fetched to suggest that the essential shift in European sociological thought on human conflict from before to after the Second World War has been a shift in focus form class conflict to race conflict. (Halsey, 1971, p. 301).